cmac has asked for the
wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

1. If I build perl to an x86 arch higher than i386, will the resultant perl be willing to use modules in a directory like /usr/local/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.7/i386-freebsd, if I say that it should be included in @INC ??

This contains things from my hosting provider, for which I don't have access to source. On the face of it, using modules compiled for a predecessor arch should be OK...

2. Does anyone know of a utility program that discovers and displays the x86 architecture of a machine that it's run on? The tech support people at my hosting provider have a hard time with Qs like "what processor is my site running on?"

3. I want to build a perl with setuid capability. Can I answer "Does your kernel have *secure* setuid scripts?" with "yes" for freeBSD-6.3?

In general, perl strives to have a static binary interface. If you're using another perl 5.8.8 or 5.8.9, it should be able to use things compiled for perl 5.8.7. I wouldn't assume this would follow for things compiled to a different processor spec. I expect you'd find out immediately if it /didn't/ work so it won't hurt you to just try for i686 and see if it fails when loading something from i386.

As for what CPU you're running, there's the uname program and the /proc directory. I don't know whether FreeBSD automatically mounts /proc or not.

Regards discovering CPU information, x86info may be available on your system.

You may want to consider installing Perl to a different path (e.g. /opt/appname/perl), that way you can avoid any issues when messing with Perl that your OS may rely on for system tasks. See INSTALL and README.freebsd for futher information.

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
Larry Wall for his website
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage ā trois
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
Other (please explain why)